No staff of agriculturists or any other specialists trained for
scientific or literary research can be expected to order, catalog and
care for books as quickly and efficiently as can the well organized
library staff of forty, with its order department, gifts, exchange and
periodical assistants, and cataloging, binding, loan, and reference
departments, whose whole time and attention is devoted to these special
lines of library work. The library, too, which handles some thirty
thousand new books a year can afford to have more elaborate equipment
in the way of trade bibliographies of various countries, catalogs
of other libraries, mechanical means for duplicating catalog cards,
shelving books, etc., than can such an institution as an experiment
station whose money should be spent mostly on salaries of specialists
and laboratory and field equipment.